Oh boy, does the USA need a major overhaul!!

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Our unemployment rate isn't that bad? What? On paper it doesn't look bad, but in actuality it is due to the many people who cannot collect unemployment benefits because they have run out.

KICK THE ILLEGALS OUT,GIVE AMERICANS THEIR JOBS BACK, AND MAKE ENGLISH OUR OFFICIAL LANGUAGE!! !!

If a lawsuit is frivolous, it is usually thrown out of court early. Lawsuits may add 2-3% to the cost of medical care, but when there is major malpractice a person will need millions to cover future care and lost wages.

Compare that to overhead at insurance companies. For every dollar the customers pay, we get about 40 or 50 cents worth of actual health care. The rest goes to paper shuffling, sky-scrapers, advertising, and corporate jets.

Yeah, having it in the hands of the private sector does suck but then again if it were in the hands of the government I'd be a lot more worried. These kinds of costs I think are kind of a necessary evil unless you're willing to start letting the government tell you what you can and can't do in your daily life (I mean to a much greater degree than they do already).

4.7% according to the bureau of labor statistics. That is not bad at all and better than many nations.

Not really, our employment rate is also higher than most nations. Like in 2004 our employment rate was 75.4 whereas the average for Europe was about 67.8 and assuming that some crazy change hasn't happened in 3 years, our statistics should still be quite good.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/30/35024561.pdf (page 4)


I don't think that most Americans really want to work on construction or migrant work. I think that the real issue is that the Mexicans are a foreign people and belong to a foreign culture that we find disgusting which is why English as a national language is a part of this debate. There can be some impact on the wages of people with less skill of course, but if this were purely economical then there would not be such a nationalist streak to this.


No, the supply would be different. The illegal immigrants are additional people seeking to sell labor (AKA additional suppliers) if more labor is available to be sold then supply is higher. The removal of labor suppliers means that less supply exists. The labor supply is different, unless we are going to argue that we are now impressing American laborers into work.

I still think that it sucks to a great extent because of the government. The insurance companies shouldn't be doing as much as they do. Insurance is merely meant to be a means of pooling risk, it now protects people from the costs of medicine which makes medicine cheaper and thus increases consumption of medicine quite unnecessarily. Yes, you are right though, once a medical market is eliminated then medical choice will drop dramatically. Frankly, I think that they have too much control already.

yeah? when?

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=CADUSD= ... z=l&q=l&c=

The exchange rate continually fluctuates. However, here is the rate as I am typing this message. It is updated on a real-time basis:

1.00 CAD=1.01768 USD

1 CAD = 1.01768 USD

1 USD = 0.982625 CAD

In other words, the $U.S. is worth about 1.8 cents more than the $Canadian.

You can do the conversions for yourself on this page:

http://www.xe.com/

I do not find Hispanic culture to be particularly disgusting and I actually find it to be quite interesting. Furthermore, I have worked with Mexicans, Peruvians, and other Hispanics and they are all decent, honest people just trying to make a living, but they are here LEGALLY.

My problem with the current immigration situation is that the influx of people is putting a tremendous strain on our medical and social welfare systems, which are already broken, and they feel that they have a right to these services. If they were here legally, I'd say that they would have such a privilege, however they are not and therefore have no rights at all (i.e. illegal=against the law, without law).

As for the language debate, I believe it is tied into my second point about feeding off of our systems. If I were to live in Mexico I'd have to learn basic Spanish in order to communicate my basic needs and wants, the least that they can do is to reciprocate and learn basic English.

Oh, and by the way, you'd be surprised what someone desperate for a job will do.

I think that everyone in the USA should learn Spanish, because

1. It is fun to learn a foreign language

2. The USA is well behind the rest of the world in terms of learning foreign languages

3. Spanish is practical, because much of our future population growth will be Spanish speaking.

Chinese will probably be more practical for the next generation, but Spanish for ours.

Not that everyone wants to be practical.

Oh, I am not denigrating all people against illegal immigration at all, but rather I don't think that most people are against the immigration for very good reasons and that is not to say that those who promote immigration have good ideas or good plans either.

I do agree that immigration does put pressure on these systems. In fact, I know one economist who claimed that we could not have open borders and welfare systems so by doing this we are preventing our system from working.

I am not saying anything at all against the learning of English by immigrants. I have defended that position before.

Surprised? No, not at all. I don't think I would be surprised and to be honest; I am a person who surprises people more than am surprise.

Frankly, I thought you were trying to reference a public opinion rather than expressing your own opinion and thus was attacking the public opinion.

That is a highly subjective statement and for a person studying economics it is questionable. An important lesson in economics is that all value has a subjective basis.

That does not mean that the US should learn a foreign language. The USA is behind the rest of the world in terms of being geographically located in the old world.

Well, I guess you can make that argument, but only if we suppose a purpose.


We would have to define practical; most people are practical to their own ends.

Blame it on the Iraq war and outsourcing, very costly to the US and many developed nations. Opening borders is also bound to put pressure on state services. The high dependence on oil is also to blame, the US is going to be crippled if the price of oil barrels reaches the $200 mark. An alternative needs to be found which doesn't mean the replacement of food crops with biofuel crops. Instead, biofuels could be produced by GM bacteria in tanks, with a little genetic modification here and there, so that biofuels will not end up increasing food prices. Has it been overlooked, or what?

Sometimes I attack public opinion, but most of the time I'm just expressing my own thoughts, which usually just get me into trouble.

Right, tone shifts in internet typing can throw me off a little.

I am very practical. Practicality=realism. I also think a world language would be beneficial, I'd support Spanish for this...... I'm just opposed to learning Spanish on the grounds of accomodating someone moving into my country (because if I were to move to, lets say, Japan, I wouldn't expect them to stop what they were doing and learn English to accomodate me, I would learn Japanese, it's a respect thing)..... So some would say that by making Spanish a world language I'd be giving in to that, but I don't see it that way. Spanish is a simple language everyone can learn, and it would be highly beneficial if we had a common language that everybody in the world knew how to speak.

Also, I failed to see AG's logic that an anti-illegal immigration stance can't be non-race related.... The bottom line factor there has nothing at all to do with their race. It lowers OUR wages, takes our jobs, leaves our borders open to criminal activity, illegals do not have to pay the same taxes as the rest of us, and a govnernment needs to be able to regulate things, they have to know how many are here, who are here, if they've got a criminal record or are on the run. Illegal immigration hurts us in many ways, and none of them being "because theyr brown".
Personally, I do think we should help Mexico out, but not by letting them live here illegally and off record. That hurts us. The best way to stop illegal immigration is stop the incentive, help Mexico to become a more influential and prosperous nation.